Typical homeopathic medicines, for instance, are so diluted that the final product does not contain a measurable trace of the medicine. Rubik, director of the Center for Frontier Science at Temple University in Philadelphia, thinks a wavelike "signal" remains in the diluted product, allowing a subtle informational transfer to take place and heal the body - even though scientific instruments can't detect that signal.

"Biological organisms like us may be more sensitive than instruments," Rubik said.

Homeopathy is just one of hundreds of alternative medicines practiced around the world, medicines such as acupuncture needle treatments, and electromagnetic therapy, in which the body is treated with low-level nonionizing electromagnetic radiation.

Many of these nontraditional approaches to medicine are ridiculed by much of the traditional medical establishment. But according to a Time/CNN poll conducted in October 1991, 7.5 million Americans said they had sought relief in nontraditional treatments.

Rubik said classes in homeopathy are offered at the medical schools of Harvard, Tufts, Columbia, Georgetown and others. He said at least 2,500 U.S. doctors practice homeopathic ways.

To understand those ways, a little more explanation is required. Rubik, who will speak on the subject of scientific explanations for nontraditional medicine at 7 tonight at the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility auditorium in Newport News, used the Spanish Fly treatment to illustrate the homeopathic approach.

A traditional physician, she said, might prescribe large doses of antibiotics to treat that specific chronic bladder infection, along with a pain reliever to mask symptoms of pain and discomfort.

The homeopathic doctor, Rubik said, takes a holistic view of the patient, a "body, mind and spirit" approach in which the treatment can vary with the day-to-day condition of the patient.

This sort of doctor prescribes a curative on a theory first developed by German physician Christian F.S. Hahnemann in the early 19th century: The condition should be treated with a substance that causes a similar symptom in the patient.

"Like cures like," as the Greek Hippocrates suggested.

That's not the only aspect of homeopathic medicine that seems to work in reverse. Rubik said the higher the dilution of a curative, the more potent the medicine.

Rubik admits there's no scientific basis for such a result. "We may have to invoke quantum physics to come to a full understanding of how it works - that matter has a wave nature as well as a particle nature," she said.

"There's something more to matter than just molecules," Rubik said. "Homeopathy requires us to view matter as information."

Rubik calls these alternative methods "energy medicines."

She believes in them, but not to the exclusion of traditional treatments.

"I see the power of energy medicines to add to what we already have," Rubik said, "so people have more choice. In some cases, the options might work where conventional medicines fall short.

"I feel that the energy medicines will be one of the mainstream medicines as we move into the next century," Rubik said "because it works.